So I went to Andrew Bird last night, and it was incredible. I got to the place, which is the O2, a giant dome building out on the Greenwich peninsula about 5 pm, 2 hours before the doors opened. I wanted to make sure I had a good spot. And I did - Front row center, the absolute best spot in the room (by my judging). But the unfortunate part is that I could have gotten there at 7 when the doors opened, and probably gotten the same exact spot. It's alright though, I felt like I earned it with waiting that long.
The venue was inside the giant dome, not the big Arena that huge-names play at, but it was a great venue nonetheless, fit about 1,500 or so, great acoustics. After a great opening set by Lonely Dear, Andrew came out and blew my mind. I have a new favorite person in the world. For those of you that don't know, he is a classically trained violin, who then went through several bands/albums of retro swing and jazz, and then went more towards pop/quirky type stuff. He's well renowned for his lyrics, one of my favorites is "my dewy-eyed Disney bride/what has tried?/swapping your blood for formeldahyde?" They make no sense and yet are perfect at the same time.
He writes for a NY Times blog about writing songs, and he's done two so far that are really great, you should check them out. He's been writing about the construction of a new song called "Oh No" and he played that one last night, so it was really cool. And I got video of it below.
The set was really short though, he only played for about an hour, 10 or 11 songs. When he said "last song" I thought he was kidding. But it was worth it, he just gets so into the songs, eyes shut, his music sometimes causing him to knock over things, he gets so caught up in it. He loops things, so he'll start with a little pizzicato figure in the violin, then hit the looping pedal so that that goes on over and over. Then he adds layers and layers, adding guitar, hand claps, whistles, it's just incredible how much sound he can produce in a minute or so, just massive sounds. The usual song formula was intro-build up huge sound, drop it down to just him and violin singing the verse, then bring everything back for the chorus, etc. Just great.
And I got video!! This is exclusive, people, a new song from his new album he's working on, called "Oh No". It only got half the song because my battery died, and the audio sucks in some parts, but enjoy. This shows exactly what an awesome spot I had, this was my viewpoint the whole show:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment